Clare Harvey

C Clare Harvey grew up in Devon, Surrey, and Mauritius. A love of travel, and seventeen years as the ‘trailing spouse’ of a serving soldier, meant Clare has had stints working in journalism, charity PR, and English language tuition, all over the world. The surprise discovery that her mother-in-law served in the army during World War 2 sparked Clare’s debut novel, THE GUNNER GIRL, which won both the Exeter Novel Prize and the Joan Hessayon Award for new fiction. She has an MA in creative writing, and is currently working towards a PhD in experimental writing, with a chapter in an academic collection, Haunting Lives, due for publication by Bloomsbury in 2025. Clare now lives in Nottingham with her family, three cats and a dog.

Listen to Clare reading her ‘secret’ novel on Substack @clareharvey, find her on Instagram @clareharvey13, or on her website: https://clareharvey.net: here

Latest book: THE ESCAPE [Simon & Schuster UK]

Clare Harvey One winter morning in Germany in early 1945, Detta passes a group of exhausted British prisoners of war who are being force-marched westwards. One man catches her eye and she cannot forget him. The following day she receives an urgent message to contact the local priest: he needs her help.

Miranda is a photography student in Berlin in 1989 as the Wall falls. Trapped in an abusive relationship, her one hope for escape is an old postcard of the village her grandmother, Detta, was born in. As Miranda flees through the rubble of the Berlin wall and into the East, she begins to suspect she’s being followed by the Stasi…

Two very different timelines; two women who share a history and a dark secret. Can they save each other now the time has come to reveal it?

THE NIGHT RAID published by Simon & Schuster UK

World-renowned war artist Dame Laura Knight is commissioned to paint propaganda portraits of factory girls and is sent to the ordnance factories in her hometown of Nottingham. At first she relishes the opportunity for a nostalgia trip, but when she starts work on a portrait of two particular women, Violet Smith, and her co-worker Zelah Fitzlord, memories begin to resurface that she has spent half a lifetime trying to forget.
But, just like war artist Laura, Violet and Zelah have something hidden, mistakes that they have tried to leave behind with their old selves.
Will the night shift keep these women’s secrets, or will the past explode into the present and change all of their lives forever?

The English Agent (Simon & Schuster), Clare Harvey's gripping wartime drama, is out now in paperback.

Having suffered a traumatic experience in the Blitz, Edie feels utterly disillusioned with life in wartime London. The chance to work with the Secret Operations Executive (SOE) helping the resistance in Paris offers a fresh start. Codenamed ‘Yvette’, she’s parachuted into France and met by the two other members of her SOE cell. Who can she trust?

Back in London, Vera desperately needs to be made a UK citizen to erase the secrets of her past. Working at the foreign office in charge of agents presents an opportunity for blackmail. But when she loses contact with one agent in the field, codenamed Yvette, her loyalties are torn.

THE GUNNER GIRL (Simon & Schuster)

It is winter 1941. Teenage Vanessa loses her entire family when her home is bombed before her very eyes. Traumatised, she seizes her admired older sister Joan’s identity papers and joins the army in her stead. This sets in motion a chain of events whereby she is recognised for her abilities but becomes steeped in deceit and subterfuge. In a plot that expertly weaves Vanessa’s journey with her fellow girl soldiers Edie and Bea, this original debut deftly combines romance, tragedy and coming-of-age stories, set against a backdrop of wartime London.